Banette and Phantump
by Purple Floof
Summary: This is a one-shot. I'm not solid on the history of all the characters from Pokémon, but as far as I know the backstory on this one is open-ended, so I chose her. Aside from that, it's all original content based on the Pokémon universe. I have no affiliation with Gamefreak/Nintendo blahblahblah, all rights reserved, Pokémon is owned by Gamefreak/Nintendo, not me, hope you enjoy.


It had been a long day, dad had taken me to Grandpa's place for the night, as we lived too far from the professor's lab to get there in time normally and he lived much closer to it then we did. When we finally got to his house, it was already dusk, and father had to head back home to finish some work. He knocked on the door for me, and we heard some rustling. Grandpa opened the door and smiled at the sight of us.  
"Oh, how wonderful to see you both! Come in, come in, please, have some tea."  
"Sorry dad, but I've got work to get to, it's just gonna be her with you tonight."  
"Oh, that's a shame, well, either way, it was nice to see you, Yūji, come by any time."  
"Of course dad, and you be good now, okay sweetie?"  
"Yes dad, I will."  
"Alright, now go ahead inside, and make sure to remember to call me after you've received your Pokémon, y'hear?"  
"Of course dad, I will. Love you!" I hug dad around the waist then went inside Gandpa's house to wait. Grandpa eventually came in, and we talked about tomorrow, what I was hoping, what I would do after I got my Pokémon, and then we ate dinner he prepared. The meal was filling and extremely tasty, as Grandpa's cooking always was, and after we finished I excused myself to go to my room to prepare for tomorrow. I double checked everything, my bag, my supplies, my clothes, everything was in order. I then went to find Grandpa, who was sitting in his chair in the living room. I sat down next to him on the floor and looked up at him.  
"So, Grandpa, this is it. I'll be leaving the town after tomorrow, so tonight is the last night I'll see you for a while. I know it's been a while, so you might not remember, but... could you tell me a story? Like you used to when I was little? Sorry, I'm just... a bit nervous, honestly."  
"Nonsense dear, it's a big change, it's understandable to be nervous. What kind of story would you like to hear?"  
"One that you haven't told me before, and, uh, could it be about Pokémon?"  
"A new story, you say? And about Pokémon... well, hm... Alright, I think I have just the right one, this is something I've been saving for a rainy day. Granted, it's not raining, but that's not the important bit. Anyway, a long, long time ago, back before we had fancy technology such as Pokéballs, the only way we could get Pokémon to do our bidding was to befriend them and raise them the normal way. This, in and of itself, was a hard task, but the harder part was getting their eggs so we could raise them from hatching. Even the ones we raised ourselves would eventually leave the village, looking for a new mate, and it would be sheer chance if we ever saw them again. So, we had our strongest members of the village go out every time a mating season came to an end to go search for eggs." Grandfather pauses a moment, taking a sip of his tea.  
"Now, my brother and I-"  
"Brother? Grandpa, I thought you-"  
"I know, I know, I'm getting to that, be patient dear." Grandpa raises his voice a little, but brings it back down. He shifts in his seat a little, looking off into the distance. I turn around and don't see anything, there's only wall and the hearth in that direction, a fire usually in it burning, but it's summer and the heat is already hard to handle.  
"Now, where was I..." I turn back to grandpa, looking at him expectantly. "Ah, right. Now, my brother and I used to be so enamored with the thought of one day being able to earn the right to raise our own Pokémon, a rather straightforward trial, all things considered; find and take an egg, then make it back alive without attracting the attention of the nest's owners. Simple enough, we thought, and it gave us confidence. If it was so simple, why did only the big people get to go? You didn't even get to do it if you were an adult, the elders of the village had to give their approval. So we decided to go ourselves, and share the responsibility of whatever egg(s) we found." "Which eggs did you find Grandpa?" I asked, and without missing a beat Grandpa flicked my forehead lightly. "You need to work on that patience dear, if you want to become a trainer someday you'll learn that it will be one of your most valuable assets." Grandpa chuckled, then leaned back into his chair and heaved a long sigh before continuing. "Now my brother and I were very close, but he was younger and perhaps not as strong as I was at the time, but he was just as courageous as any other boys our age if not more so by a fair margin, a trait that I lacked. For me, I had a doll to help me when I was scared. I loved that doll dearly, and took it with me everywhere I went, and my brother and I went to go get an egg for ourselves was no exception."  
"How old were you two?" I asked. Grandpa thought for a moment, and replied "You know, I must have been about your age, nine going on ten, and my brother had just turned eight."  
"That young? And you went out all on your own?"  
"Well, our thinking was that we had each other, so we weren't really alone. We'd never really seen wild Pokémon before except the usual Pidgey and the occasional Ratatta in the village, and all the big and strong Pokémon were kept very well in check by their owners, and far from where us children would be allowed. In any case, we set out into the forest in search of eggs. We were out there for quite a while before we started to hear the sounds of Pokémon, and like the ignorant little children we were, we went straight towards them. We hid behind some light cover, some grass that was taller than us even, and peeked through. What we saw shook me to my bones, and my little brother must not have fared any better, because I smelled something acidic and sulfurous next to me, which could have only been my brother urinating his pants (I had thankfully used a tree a few minutes earlier, but if I hadn't...). A pair of Sawsbuck were fighting each other, knocking heads and antlers together as a female stood in the distance watching the fight. Unfortunately, they must have smelled my brother's urine and they both turned in our direction. One of them lowers it's head at us, and I stand there frozen, but my brother suddenly pushes me as hard as he could back the way we came, and I come back to my senses. We both run, as fast as our little legs can carry us. We eventually make it back to the village outskirts, albeit disheveled and out of breath, and once we regain ourselves we take stock of ourselves. We have various cuts and bruises from our flight, but altogether we're okay. I then notice that my doll is missing. 'I must have dropped it when we were running!' I cry, 'I have to go back! I *need* it'. My brother shakes his head, 'It's too dangerous, we coulda been really hurt back there!' 'But-' He cuts me off with a finger to my lips, 'Look, it's my fault that you lost it, I'm the one who peed himself and got us noticed, so... wait here.' And he goes off to our house. When he comes back, he no longer smells of urine, and he has fresh clothes and shoes on. 'I'll be back soon, okay? Wait for me.' And he goes off back into the forest." Grandpa stops talking for a while, looking at the empty hearth, gazing into it with a very sad look on his face. A few minutes pass and I don't dare break the silence, but the body is not at the whims of our feelings, and I sneeze, bringing him back out of his thoughts. Grandpa looks at me and a strange look comes over his face, and getting up out of his chair he comes over and hugs me. It's a warm, tight hug, and it lasts a while before he goes back to his chair.  
"I waited for him, you know. I did. For a very long time, in fact. So long that I ended up falling asleep there, leaned up against the house we had ended up next to. I woke up wet from the morning dew to the worried face of the house' occupant staring down at me. 'Are you alright? What are you doing here all alone?' The woman had asked, 'Waiting for my brother' I replied sleepily. 'Your brother? Where did he go?' She seemed confused, and for the life of me I couldn't understand why, it seemed so simple. I pointed to the forest and she looked, and then back at me she stared, and then she rushed me into her house, told me to wait there, and rushed out again. When she came back, a large group of the adults were with her, and if I had been much older I might have recognized that a good deal of them were ones who owned Pokémon. 'Alright son, now tell us where your brother is.' I told them what happened, and the elders sent a group of the adults with Pokémon out, I heard things like 'search party' and 'other villages nearby'. Afterwards I was taken home and the elder who went with me told me to tell my mother what had happened. After I finished, the elder took her to another room and I can only assume told her what was being done about it all. Eventually he left, and I didn't hear much from her except quiet crying, and then later when my father came home they had a long talk. He came out and punished me for 'not taking better care of my brother, you're the older one, how could you do this!?', I won't go into the details about that. Regardless, from that day on, I never saw my brother again. The search parties never found him, not even a trace. They even had our village's Arcanine (our village's pride, known far and wide as one of the strongest in the region) out to track him, but after a certain point there was nothing, as if he'd just up and disappeared. They said it could have been some Litwick, or maybe a passing Drifloon saw him, we never knew. In any case, that's more or less the end of it. Or, at least, it would be, but..."  
"But what? What Grandpa? What is it?" I asked excitedly, bouncing up from my place on the floor, practically begging at the side of his chair.  
"Well, a few years after your father was born, and Grandma had passed just a year before that due to health complications (bless her soul, and may she rest in peace), I was taking your father out on a walk in the forest. By then it had become much safer to do so, what with the bare-bones technology for Pokémon training being in the works, collars that guaranteed obedience were better than nothing after all, even if you needed to get them on the Pokemon first, and needed to change them out if they got bigger than the collars could resize themselves. Your father was just as adventurous as any six year old boy is, and when I wasn't looking, he ran off. I turn back and see him disappearing into the underbrush, and I bolt after him, thoughts of my younger brother flooding back to me. I eventually hear his voice, and slow down, as he doesn't seem to sound as though he's scared, rather, like he's talking to someone. I come around a tree and see him sitting at a stump, next to two Pokémon, chatting away like it's the most normal thing in the world. Now, normally your son next to two wild Pokémon is frightening enough to a parent, but on top of that, it was a Banette and a Phantump, two ghost type Pokémon. My son looks up and notices me, still stood stalk in shock at the sheer oddity of the situation, and waves at me. The Banette turns and when it sees me, its mouth immediately unzips and it's eyes take on this extremely angry look, and it moves like it's about to attack me, but then the Phantump turns and sees me. It proceeds to float over to me, cocking it's head, then floats up right in front of my face, looking at me. I swear, it must have done so for minutes before it turns around and goes over to the Banette and do what I can only think of as calm it down, letting out its cries in what I assume is a soothing way. Sure enough, the Banette calms down, and walks over to me. When it reaches my feet, it looks up at me, and lets out a loud cry, and I feel some strange force bring me to my knees. It then looks at me with a strange look on it's face, and if a Banette could ever look angry and sad then this one did. It turns around and on it's back I see embroidery that looked very familiar. I think back, and suddenly it becomes clear, that was the embroidery my mother had sewn onto the back of my doll I'd lost so long ago. The old wives tale about how Banette come into existence when a doll is abandoned must be true, and this was mine. I come up to sitting on my heals and knees, no longer being held down by it's psychic powers, and look down at it, incredulous, and it looked up at me with sadness, and I know if Banette could cry then there would be tears on it's cloth face. I pick up the Banette and bring it into my arms, hugging it tenderly. 'I missed you, old friend, I'm so sorry it took this long to find you...' and the Banette weakly cries in my ear, hugging me back. My son then comes up to me and says 'The Phantump missed you too, dad!' I look at him confused, 'Excuse me?' 'Yeah!' He replies, 'It says it took a long while, but he found your doll!' And it hits me like a ton of bricks. There was another tale passed around the kitchens, this one a fair deal darker, and not told to children. Rather, I'd learned of it in a book, a story about where Phantump come from. It is said that when children get lost and die in the forest, their spirits will be taken in and protected by it, turning them into a Phantump. I look at the Phantump and am lost for words. I had never told your father about my brother before, or anything related to that sad page in the book of my life. There was no way he could have known, and certainly no way a Pokémon could have either, let alone told my son about it, not unless... Tears streaked down my face, and I called out my brothers name in a whisper. The Phantump came over and floated up to eye level with me and wiped away some tears with it's stumpy little hands, and let out a warbling cry. I looked at the two Pokémon, my old doll turned-Banette, and my long-lost little brother turned-Phantump, and hugged them both. My son came over and hugged me, and afterwards we all returned to the village."  
"So *that's* where your Banette and Trevenant came from, Grandpa?"  
"Oh yes, and there was quite a bit of a hullabaloo when we got back, no one had ever brought back wild Pokémon before, let alone ghost types, but I told them it was fine and to trust me, and while hesitant, the two Pokémon were acting docile and Phantump even waved at them all shyly. Your father was grinning ear to ear, walking with a Phantump on his shoulder, his hand in mine, and Banette's sleeve in his other, the picture of a kid proud at achieving something he knew was great. We went back to our house, and while I had a collar for whenever I might have gotten the chance to own a Pokémon, it wasn't calibrated for ghost types, let alone for ones with such small necks. Regardless, they stayed docile, and as ghost types are wont to do, they stayed just as they were when I first saw them, trapped in the state they were born in from start until their final death (if that ever truly comes for them), and when the day finally came that Pokéballs became available to the public, I was the first of our village to make the long journey with Banette and Phantump to the nearest city with a Pokémart. People walking in with their Pokémon was unusual but not unheard of in those days, and I walked straight up to the counter and bought two Pokéballs. I then turned around, activated them, and held them up to the Pokémon, one in each hand, and to the abject surprise of every person in that Pokémart, they both allowed the balls to lock on and simply tapped them, proceeding to be sucked into them in a flash of light. After a few seconds of very light shaking, the balls chimed their confirmation of successful captures. I picked the balls up, let out Banette and Phantump, and was about to leave when the cashier came out of his state of surprise and called after me. 'Uh, um, sir! If you'd like, we can show you how to input a name to the Pokéball, if you do, then the Pokémon will be taught to respond to the name. I think about it, then allow him to teach me. Afterwards, I proceed to name them, and as you should well know by now, Banette became Kimekomi, after the name I'd given him as a doll before he turned. As for Phantump, I gave him his real name, T-"  
"Takano! I remember him, Grandpa, he was the one you used in your last battle with dad! Dad loves telling that story, because it was the one he finally won!"  
"Yes, yes, I remember that one, I *was* there after all. Speaking of your father, he was the reason I was able to evolve Takano into a Trevenant in the first place, up until he went on his gym tour after his tenth birthday, Takano was still a Phantump after all these years, and I'd never understood why he didn't turn into a Trevenant like all the other Phantump normally would have in the wild. I'd always assumed that that was simply due to age, and that Phantump became Trevenant in the same way that saplings become mighty trees, over vast periods of time, but when your father returned (just in time for his 12th birthday, in fact), he told me that there was another way to make it happen. So I followed him to the Pokécenter that had just a few years ago been built, our village had finally grown large enough to be considered a town, and towns get Pokécenters per league regulations as towns attract trainers and trainers need healers. In any case, he led me to a terminal on the second floor of the Pokécenter, and confirmed my suspicion that Phantump only evolve after a long period of time, but that recently it was discovered that through trading, Phantump evolve to Trevenant instantly! Excitedly, I ask him how trading works, and he walked me through it, explaining that after the trade the Pokémon's loyalty will be transferred, however it takes a considerable amount of time, and if the Pokémon is traded back immediately after, then there won't be any issues. So we initiate the trade, and I receive his Pokémon, and I notice it's the one I gave him so long ago, his first Pokémon Minccino, and a tear comes to my eye remembering his 9th birthday when I'd given it to him, promising that if he could raise it well then I would allow him to take the gym tour when he came of age. In any case, when your father said he was ready, we initiated a trade again, returning our Pokémon to their original owners, and I was about to let out Takano before your father reminded me that Trevenant are rather large, and we should go outside first. I laughed at myself, as overeager as if I was his age again, and we headed out. I let Takano out and there he was, in all his massive glory, now as a Trevenant, tall and mighty, and not the least bit scary looking. After a moment of marveling at him, Takano walked over to me and hugged me, creaking out a low cry, as if testing his new voice. Yūji tapped my arm and I looked over to him, smiling up at me, and he told me something I'll never forget to the end of my days. 'You finally get to see your brother all grown up now, dad!' I stare at him, shocked, then back to Takano, and realize that Yūji is absolutely right, and I turn to him and sweep him off his feet into a bear hug. 'I couldn't have asked for a better son. Thank you, Yūji. Your mother would have been so proud of you today.' Tears streaking down my face, I put him down, and Takano then picks him up and places him atop his head, nestled in the foliage that now adorned it. I call up to him, 'Hold on tight there!' and we headed home."  
"... Wow, Grandpa... Dad never told me *that* story before."  
"Indeed, and it's good that he didn't, I always told him after you were born that I would be the one to tell it to you if you ever asked."  
"Well, thanks, Grandpa. It was a really good story!"  
"Of course, only the best for my little granddaughter. Now go on and get to bed, it's late, and you've got a big day tomorrow. Wouldn't want to be late to get your first Pokémon, now would you?"  
"Okay, Grandpa. Goodnight!" I kiss Grandpa on the cheek, then turn to head to my room.  
"Goodnight Yellow, sleep well." I hear, just as I'm leaving the room. I pass by Kimekomi, who was waiting just outside the door, who heads inside as I leave. I walk to my room and get into bed, looking outside my window at Takano resting in the garden, where he'd begun to take root as Grandpa left the house less and less. I worry about Grandpa, sometimes, but know that I can make him and dad proud by becoming a trainer, and with both nervousness and excitement playing at odds with each other, I fall asleep, dreaming of all the adventures I'd have to come, and all the friends - both human and Pokémon, I'd make along the way.


End file.
